


the body as two, made whole

by weatheredlaw



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Body Horror, Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:45:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>your heart is not quite your own these days</i> -- bruce catalogues, files, and separates his thoughts</p>
            </blockquote>





	the body as two, made whole

**Author's Note:**

> nothing is capitalized. i started writing this as just random notes on a fic and then it just became a fic and i was too lazy to correct it so here you go

a memory; bruce in college, drunk and seeing a fortune teller on a dare. some girl he's trying to impress behind the curtain, giggling. god he wants her so he stretches out his palms and his smile is wide and obnoxious and the woman's hands are dry and she smells like chamomile and his trip to india the summer before. her skin is weathered and wrinkled and she is so old but her eyes are on his and he can't seem to look away. "you are troubled. your father haunts you. your mother haunts you. you haunt yourself." and bruce is trembling as she reaches down and runs her fingers through something and wipes them on his palms. bright, angry green. "guard yourself. protect yourself. go home tonight, alone, and dream. and when you wake up, write it down and do not forget it, for as long as you live. remember it every day, live it and drink it and make it your blood and life. you will fail your next exam." 

 

 

a dream; bruce running, arms outstretched and palms green and bleeding and the blood is green and his vision is green, but his gut is bruised purple and blue and yellow and he retches, tumbling and shaking and catching himself on nothing. there is nothing behind him but himself and then he is awake, terrified and alone. trembling, he takes the paper from his bedside table and writes it down and hides it. he folds the paper up and shoves it into his wallet and forgets about it, but sometimes he will pay for dinner or coffee or look for a condom and find it and he won't be hungry anymore and they won't be worth it anymore and he will go home and be alone.

 

 

tony looks up at him like he doesn't know what he's gotten into, and maybe that's why bruce is doing this, to prove that he's too much for tony to handle, that he is more than tony bargained for, that tony is so small in bruce's hands and his life is so fragile. bruce covers the arc reactor with his palm and tony's breath hitches in his throat. the room is dark, painfully dark and maybe they are both reminded of what they really are in this moment. 

bruce pulls his hand away.

"i'm sorry," he says. "i'm so sorry."

tony reaches up, covers bruce's heart with his hand and his skin is so dry and calloused and beautiful.

"we're not so different," he murmurs. 

bruce closes his eyes and doesn't know how to tell tony how wrong he is how completely and totally wrong he is about everything. 

 

 

when he was a boy, his father beat him into the ground and bruce heard the sound of his bones break before he felt it, a winded, howling pain that travelled like wild fire to his brain. and he looked at his arm and he saw bone and blood and his skin was split and his father was stumbling back, heaving into the bushes. a neighbor called an ambulance.

but bruce was so infatuated with the way his body could split along the seams. like there were parts of him that lined up, and if you tore it the right way, or twisted something here -- he could begin to unravel. 

he never broke something like it again, and it hurt and the surgery was terrible and bruce wondered what it would be like to be made of steel. 

he tells tony this story and they both find it funny, but for different reasons.

or maybe tony is crying.

bruce can't tell the difference. 

 

 

he lets tony fuck him for the first time crushed against a table in a lab. bruce's hands scramble over the table top, trying to get a grip on something. he ends up with his fingers curled around the corners and he can feel the cold press of tony's zipper against his ass and it's hot fuck it's hot in here but he has wanted this for so long. tony is mindless, but his hands are wandering, touching, promising. bruce urges him on, braces himself against the table, and tony's cock is deep and the whole thing is wanton and filthy and bruce is keenly aware that a good chunk of the walls here are _glass_ and he fucking _likes it_. 

"i knew you were a freak," tony hisses in his ear. it's a compliment in the way only tony knows how to hand out. bruce reaches down and jacks himself off, feels tony come and dig his nails into bruce's hip bones. bruce comes over his own hand and they slump against the table. "total freak," tony says. 

"you like it."

"damn straight. or something. fuck i don't think i can move. i actually can't move."

bruce melts onto the floor with him and remembers a dream. he closes his eyes and shoves it away. it's been years since he's looked at that paper, but it's gone everywhere with him. there were cities where bruce would leave eveything except for that paper, cramming it into his pocket before abandoning the small little collection of crap he'd gathered in a pile on the floor. 

he feels a little sick. 

 

 

this is the story he tells, when no one is around and he is alone with himself and the other guy, waking him up, muscle by muscle, bone by bone. because when bruce slips into his own body and the hulk emerges from the space where he keeps himself, it's like no one in the world is there. even though bruce is aware of sirens and people and steve giving orders and tony's back against his back, the cold plating of his suit sending shivers down the hulk's spine -- when they are, for a brief moment, one and the same, they are also alone together. 

 

 

bruce takes time for himself and visits the fortune teller again. the last time, he promises.

"it is never the last time," she says. she takes his hands, scratching her nails gently over his palms. "you are a changed man. your heart is not quite your own these days. and your body is as two, made whole." bruce nods. "you should not have fish for dinner tonight. it will not sit well." 

 

 

a memory; bruce in tony's lab, trading glasses and blinking wildly through dirty plastic lenses, watching tony stumble and frantically pull bruce's frames from his face. he is in tony's room, kissing him and making wicked promises under his breath. he is the hulk, standing shoulder to shoulder with good people who consider him their equal. he is kissing tony on a roof in los angeles. he is drinking with steve. he is boxing with clint and learning russian from natasha. he is meditating on his balcony, the hulk sitting across from him in his mind. _body as two, made whole_. 

he is breathing. he is content.

 

 

a choice; bruce tears up the sad, lonely paper with only a nightmare to its credit. he stands on the roof of avengers tower, daring to peek down and into the street. he holds the pieces in his hand and then he lets go. the wind kicks them up and over the gap between this building and the next. then they're lost. 

_it's a good place for them_ , he thinks. _so very far from me._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the ashes underneath your nails](https://archiveofourown.org/works/769081) by [Knightblazer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightblazer/pseuds/Knightblazer)




End file.
